Four years after his injury, Sheik still had trouble with his balance. In shifting his weight onto his left side he collapsed onto the metal floor below him in the cramped vent and caused a deep sound of thin metal bending out of its shape to compensate for the new weight. He pressed himself back up and the metal returned to its original form with the same sound.
"Goddesses three, Sheik, could you be any louder?" Tetra hissed.
Gritted teeth, Sheik whispered out an apology. Their only light was from rooms below. Even if he'd had use of both eyes, he knew he'd only be able to make out the faintest of shapes in the spaces between the next grate. They'd been in the air duct for what felt like hours and Sheik couldn't fully tell if they were even going the right way. The air was cold, and his uniform didn't offer much in terms of warmth. Sheik trembled in the dark space which caused him to fall more frequently. Tetra, who typically was more patient with Sheik than he felt he ever deserved, only seemed to be getting more agitated every time Sheik messed up in the moment.
When he fell in the dark space again, he heard a long sigh. He clenched his fist in frustration and pushed himself back up as quickly as he could, which only seemed to agitate the situation when the metal made an even louder sound.
"Yeah, my bad, okay? " Sheik whispered back hotly.
Tetra visibly tensed at his response and Sheik watched as she forced her shoulders to drop and let out a long breath, "I'm sorry. Just… be more careful where you move."
"Mmm," he muttered in affirmation.
The two continued in silence; the occasional bending of metal was heard and the light from the grates seen. Sheik sighed quietly in the silence. The metal beneath his fingertips was frigid to the touch and he wished to be out of the confined space. Sheik quietly pulled out a small rectangular device with orange light emitting from the back of it. The black screen on the front glowed for a moment, showing a blue eye mark with a single teardrop. The screen lit up to show a blue map of the area with an orange dot indicating their position. Well, at least they were on the right track, Sheik thought. Sheik stopped and dragged his finger slowly across the screen for a moment until he found what he had been looking for. He stopped when he spotted a red mark in the middle of a diagram of a large rectangular space.
"Tetra, we drop out at the next grate," Sheik whispered to her.
Tetra looked back and nodded to him. Her shoulders tensed slightly and she continued to crawl along the path in front of her. Sheik breathed silently and moved after her. He watched as she shakily padded along the icy metal below them and as she used her hand to tuck a stray strand of hair from her face every few meters.
"Hey, just one more objective, right? The operation is gonna be done after tonight. We'll kill Ganon, run, and then it's over," Sheik said silently. He felt his stomach churn and his heart was gripped by an icy hand. Bitterness.
"Yeah," she sighed. "Let's hope so."
Tetra stopped at a grate, and without much visible effort, the young woman pulled it free and set it on the vent in front of the narrow gap. The gap itself was less than a meter wide and about 7 meters to the concrete floor below the vent.
The room was composed of a smooth concrete floor and in the middle came a rushing river barraging into a generator that caused the room to buzz. A large metal drawbridge spanned the gap above the river in the middle of the room, and seemed the only way across. It was lit by large flood lights spanning every few meters on the wall. The walls were barren except for a few bright yellow caution signs near the generator. It was a perfect echo chamber for the river and generator.
Even if the sound in the room wasn't earsplitting, Sheik's practiced stealth would have covered the sound of his landing, not that he could make much sound dropping down due to his small stature. Tetra turned to Sheik and opened her mouth, but he couldn't make out any of what she was saying. Tetra tried to speak once more, but her sound was still cut off by the swirling of the water through the giant turbine. Sheik noticed her eye dart slightly to his left to look behind him and his eye widened slightly. He smacked a button on his gauntlet which caused a transparent blue shield of light to materialize, and turned on his heel to be met with six figures headed straight for them, with weapons drawn.
They wore combat suits of red and gray, and in their hands carried one handed blades in the shape of a sickeningly sharp sickle. Their heads were covered by masks. A single upside down eye with a teardrop coming out of the top, as if running over the forehead to the sky.
"Yiga," Tetra hissed as Tetra came up beside him.
"Why here?" Sheik asked. "I thought you made sure we came in quietly."
Tetra shook her head. "Maybe Impa got caught. Maybe we got unlucky."
The latter explanation sounded much more likely than the former. Impa wouldn't have gone down quietly, and never would she have disclosed their objective before dying. Until he could be proven otherwise, Sheik would be forced to chalk this up as dumb luck on their part.
The six circled Sheik and Tetra. They were short. Sheik blinked at the thought, momentarily it took all of his focus. None of them seemed much older than Sheik or Tetra, which was never a norm. He felt a pit growing in his stomach. Whatever Ganondorf was playing at, Sheik didn't like it.
"Tetra," he whispered when he felt her come back to back with him as they were surrounded. "Is it me, or did Ganon send out the runts of the litter?
"Not the time for this!" Tetra hissed back.
"Just… humor me, okay?"
"Fine," she breathed out. Sheik waited, and felt as though a heavy ball was dropping in his stomach. "No you're right. These aren't what we're used to."
Sheik swallowed slightly and tried to ignore the growing trepidation in the back of his mind. His body felt heavy, but Sheik let instinct take over and allowed his mind to focus on combat.
Two of the Yiga warriors wasted no time and charged at Sheik with their blades. He felt Tetra move away from him and that was all the confirmation Sheik needed. He grabbed the arm of the warrior on his right and spun, using his assailant's body as a weapon to smash into the other Yiga. The two tripped over each other and fell to the ground. Down, but most certainly not out.
The shortest Yiga, Sheik noticed from the corner of his eye as he was blindsided by a punch to the face from another Yiga, had not moved. He stood simply frozen on the spot with the blade at his side.
Sheik did his best to catalog this information in the back of his mind, but was soon distracted by his attacker. He caught the wrist of his opponent just as the Yiga footsoldier brought his blade down in an attempt to cut Sheik open. Sheik wrestled with the Yiga Warrior for a few seconds before managing to spin, breaking the Yiga's wrist and jabbing the blade into the Yiga's thigh. He didn't want to kill. Not without confirmation.
The two from earlier were now back on their feet. It seemed one of their masks had begun to crack, and that was the opportunity Sheik had been looking for. As they charged him again, Sheik ducked under their swings, and when he came back up, he bashed the guard with the cracked mask in the face with his shield. Sheik had no time to survey the shattered mask however, as a cold pain shot through his right arm. His face contorted in agony and he could feel the veins in his neck tighten as he grit his teeth. While he had been busy with his goal, the other guard slipped through his defense to get in a lucky cut. Now furious, Sheik whirled around and delivered a kick to the man's gut, sending his attacker staggering backwards with flailing arms. Sheik didn't let up, though. He lunged at the man, taking him to the ground and wrestling the sickle from his hands. Using the butt of the blade, he smashed the mask to pieces and felt his heart sink when he was met with his attacker's face.
It was all wrong. None of it made sense. He didn't want to believe it was real, but he had seen the proof.
No. It wasn't proof. This was a simulation. It had to be. Sheik wouldn't accept it as a reality. He couldn't.
He sat on the floor, reeling. It was against everything he'd been trained to do. He wasn't supposed to just sit there. He was an infiltrator, an agent of espionage, and when called for it, he was an assassin.
"Sheik, get up," Tetra pleaded. His sight flicked to her, and he saw her struggle. She held a cutlass with a blade of blue energy in hand, and fought off two Yiga foot soldiers on her own.
"No, Tetra, stop," Sheik struggled.
"I can't do this alone! I need you to-"
"I won't kill a child!"
His voice rang out and all other noises, save the river and generator, ceased. There was no fighting, and he felt all eyes trained on him.
"Get out of here. All of you. Leave with your lives. Hide, run, do whatever you can. Get out. You're free.'
Masks were pulled off. They were teenage boys, all of them. The oldest looked perhaps fifteen, but no older.
Sheik saw something in their eyes. A dead look. He knew it all too well; the look of seeing so many things go terribly, horribly, unnaturally wrong.
Terror.
"I promise, on my life I will make sure each and every one of you gets out safely, just hide. Get out while you can."
The oldest boy nodded to the others, and five of the six began running, the oldest again turning to look again at Sheik and nodding to him.
One soldier remained on the floor. The one with the knife in his thigh. Sheik hesitantly pulled off the mask with one hand and was met with the fearful sapphire eyes of a blonde boy. He was maybe thirteen. He knew that fear in the boy's eyes. The boy shrunk in terror and cradled his broken wrist to his chest. He had felt it so many times in the presence of his master. His heart raced at the thought. He searched his mind for anything he might say to the other boy.
"I won't hurt you any more," Sheik said quietly. "I'm sorry."
He cursed himself silently. Who would believe that from someone who had just stabbed them in the leg? He wouldn't trust that person. He didn't deserve the same trust.
He knelt near the boy. From around his own thigh, Sheik unrolled a clean bandage. From a pouch on his belt, he produced a small vial with red liquid.
"It's a healing potion. It won't fix the wounds instantly, but it will dull the pain," Sheik explained. He held the vial out to the other boy, "What's your name?"
The boy stared at him, almost incredulous. It seemed he didn't know if Sheik was being serious, but after a moment, he gripped the vial of the restorative liquid in his hand and he hesitantly muttered, "Colin."
"Colin," Sheik repeated. "This will hurt."
Sheik gripped the hilt of the sickle with both hands and began to pull when a hand on his shoulder shocked him.
"Stop," Tetra said as she knelt beside him. She gave him a long searching look before taking his hands off hilt with hers. She then grasped the hilt herself. "Your first aid skills are a lot worse than mine, so let me help. Just keep him distracted."
Sheik felt something new well up in his stomach. Not dread or fear this time, but an overwhelming feeling of gratitude. He felt a small smile touch his face and looked at Tetra appreciatively. He turned his attention back to Colin.
His mouth was dry. In his time getting himself ready to pull out the blade he hadn't realized that he had no idea what to say to the boy. The only conversations he'd had with people his own age didn't seem to give him any help in this situation and Sheik didn't know what would. Finally he settled on a small course of small talk.
"Where are you from, Colin?" Sheik asked.
It was a lame and tactless question, he knew. Given the circumstances though, what else could he say? There wasn't any way to make up for what he had done. It wasn't according to plan. He should have stuck to the plan. He should have-
"Ordon," Colin replied weakly.
"Ordon?" Sheik asked. "But that's-"
"Far away, yeah." Colin whimpered. Sheik saw something in the boy break at that moment. Sheik saw the tears well up in the other boy's eyes, and felt his throat constrict as he watched Colin try to keep some sort of composure.
Sheik pitied the boy, but the information didn't sit well in the back of Sheik's head. "Ordon is in… Faron? In the forest communities?"
"Yeah. Small place. We're a close knit community. Everyone knows everyone there."
"But then how did you end up here?"
Colin yelped slightly as Tetra began to pull the blade out of his thigh.
"Sorry," Tetra said. "It's stuck pretty deep and I've gotta get it out if we're gonna move you."
Sheik looked back and forth between the two, and worked to quell the anticipation welling up inside of him. He breathed in deeply and let it out again. "Focus on the questions, Colin."
"It was a private school in Gerudo." Colin said weakly. There was a forlorn look in his eyes, as if he couldn't see the world around him anymore. "I had high marks in school. And I know, high marks in a small town usually means average anywhere else, but I mean really high. I kept getting offers to go to schools, but one stood out above the rest. They were gonna pay for everything, and I mean not just school, but for my family too."
Colin let out a bitter laugh. It sounded wrong coming out of someone so young. Someone other than him anyway.
"I should have guessed something was up. They had a bunch of weird rules. My parents were poor, but they were the kindest and most hard working people you could find. They did farm work for a local ranch, and had to live in a small ranch house. It was cramped. It was hard with me, my older brother, and now a sister on the way. Someone had to go, and they were offering to buy them a house, but they had to stay in Faron. Nobody was allowed to travel with me. They said the program was too intensive and that I'd need to focus.
"No one pressured me. My parents said they'd support whatever decision I made, but… My brother has always looked out for me. My parents adopted him when he was a kid and he always took care of me because of it. He didn't want me to go. He had a bad feeling about all of it, but he'd never take the choice away from me. I would have resented him then, but I should have listened. I should have stayed. I didn't know it would be like this. I didn't know they'd train me to be a killer. They said you were gonna kill me. I didn't mean to try and kill you, I didn't-"
Sheik stopped Colin by putting a hand on his shoulder. "Don't blame yourself. You didn't know what you were getting into. You thought it was a gift. But it wasn't. But this is a second chance. This is a gift for you to start over. To see the world again how it is, and how it can be. You get to choose to see how things go from now on. We'll get you home, I promise."
Sheik felt a warmth in his body as he comforted the boy. He hadn't felt like this before. He felt hopeful. It felt like the hand he was extending to Colin was a chance to heal, and he even felt a warmth coming from his right hand on the boy's shoulder.
He chalked it up though to placebo and wishful thinking. Even if he was doing a good thing for Colin, he couldn't make up for all of the horrible things he'd done anyway.
Tetra broke Sheik from his stupor.
"Sheik, we gotta move."
He looked at her. The blade was out of Colin's leg, and the vial that Colin had been holding was now in Tetra's hands. The red liquid flowed in slow, steady drops into the wound, which took effect immediately. The skin had begun to close.
"You're gonna feel tired. The potion will heal the skin, but too much of the stuff will kill you. The energy has to come from somewhere, and it will steal your life force if you have too much," Tetra explained. "Up we go, lean on me."
Tetra supported the boy's weight, and looked to Sheik to lead the way. Sheik nodded and led her across the bridge, at a much slower pace than he would have liked. But it couldn't be helped, they had to get Colin out.
Sheik led them through cramped cream colored hallways, with doors leading into small rooms on both sides. Light bounced from the floor from the obnoxiously fluorescent lights overhead. The air was stale and dusty. Everything was too close together for Sheik's liking. He'd traded one cramped space for another.
"Why are you here?" Colin asked finally, breaking the silence.
Sheik glanced back at the boy, and drew his lips into a tight line. He didn't know Colin. Revealing anything to the boy could be dangerous. After all, what if this was all just a ruse to lure them into a trap? He hadn't given any thought to if he could trust the boy before. Saving his life was one thing, but telling him the truth was another entirely.
"We're agents of the Hylian Government," Tetra supplied. "We were sent to cripple this base and kill Ganondorf."
Sheik tensed immediately. How could Tetra have been so careless, it could jeopardize everything they had already worked for, and it wasn't easy to get this far.
"Who?"
Sheik stopped. Despite his reservations, the question sounded confused. Sheik truly believed the boy had no idea who Ganondorf was. And if Tetra thought they could trust him, he would make himself okay with the idea.
"Ganondorf Dragmire, the leader of the nation of Gerudo. Hyrule has been in a cold war with him for decades, both sides send agents every so often to cause damage and be a general nuisance. Neither side really ever does anything that would lead to serious war," Tetra explained, a sour taste filling Sheik's mouth at the reality check of his status as a political puppet. "Last week things got a little too personal for the King of Hyrule, Gaepora. Ganondorf sent someone to assassinate the crown prince, and Gaepora didn't take too kindly to that, so he sent us to put an end to Ganondorf's reign."
"But wouldn't that cause-"
"Gaepora doesn't care about life so long as he gets what he wants," Sheik stated firmly. He hoped it would be dropped.
Sheik got his wish and silence continued. Every so often, they would come to an intersecting corridor and Sheik would check his digital map from his wrist monitor, and then the trio would continue on. The silence was a welcome change of pace from the night's events, and the corridors became somewhat monotonous to deal with. Now was the most dangerous part of an infiltration. When everything was going a little too well.
Many good agents had been lost to carelessness bred by monotony. When the mission began to get easy, people tended to put their guard down most. Sheik had seen it too many times in training to forget, and always those people had failed. It was their arrogance. It separated the good agents from the successful ones. A good agent could hit and run a Gerudo supply ship. A successful agent could take down the entire yard by sowing just a little bit of discord. Hyrule had become a powerhouse in espionage thanks to the ongoing conflicts surrounding the nation, but none were so practiced as Sheik Harkinian. A fact he hated himself for.
He was a master at infiltration, but couldn't hold basic conversation or maintain any sort of friendships. He didn't know how. The only people who really stuck with him were those who had been brought up the same way.
A tickling sensation began suddenly in Sheik's ear as they passed a dark corridor. The layout of the corridor seemed incredibly out of place from everything else. The paint on the hallway was just a shade too dark. Almost imperceptible. The lights were just a bit more dim than the others, not noticeable to most, but easy to spot in Sheik's trained eye. "Here."
Tetra blinked at him. "What?"
"This is the way we need to go."
"I don't understand. You didn't make any comment about any of the other hallways."
"This one is…"
Tetra let out a long sigh. "Okay, let's go."
Sheik led the way and barely could make out the whispers of Colin and Tetra behind him.
"How does he know?" Colin asked quietly.
There was a moment before Sheik heard Tetra answer Colin, "It's some sort of sixth sense he's always had. Little things he can pick up. Like how he knew not to kill your group. He's actually the one who noticed something was amiss on the night the attempt was made on the prince. I've never understood it, but he hasn't been wrong before. Not when it's something like this. It's some sort of battle wisdom for him."
Sheik frowned slightly. Just another thing that made him different from the world around him. There was a strong burning in his chest. He hated it.
They followed the corridor for a while, everything seemingly normal until they came to a staircase at the end of the hall. Sheik led the group down. They climbed down for several minutes with no signs of the steps stopping anytime soon. The walls turned from the clean cream color, to a slimy old stone. They trudged on. The floor became cracked, weedy cobblestone, and as they descended further, Sheik could hear the faint dripping of water on rock. The air, which had been stale before, became old and rank. The staircase smelled of rotting flesh and human waste. Sheik's stomach churned uncomfortably.
They finally reached the bottom of the staircase and were brought out of inky black darkness into a new corridor lit only by dancing flames from torches held on the stone wall. To Sheik's left, there was a long row of cell doors, littered with bones, some covered in furry lumps. Rats. From the ceilings hung webs too large to have been created by a normal sized spider. Everything echoed; the water, their footsteps, and most unnerving of all, their breathing.
A small stream trickled on the floor between the stones. The water was purple, and everything about it seemed contaminated, wrong. The stream slithered between stones, carrying on and on until it came to the wall, where to Sheik's surprise, the water slid up the wall. He watched the inky purple liquid crawl upwards towards the ceiling. He wanted to believe it was just a trick of the mind, but knew that what he witnessed was an act of dark magic.
Sheik's face twisted in disgust. He heard Colin wretch behind him. This was archaic and inhumane on every level of conventional society. His hand slipped to a stone hilt on his waist and his fingers closed around the cool rock infused with glowing orange light. He pulled the hilt from his belt and thumbed a switch on the back, igniting a falchion blade of blue energy. He held it in front of him and turquoise light glistened along the wet stone hallway.
They walked on, Sheik in front, Tetra supporting Colin behind. Along the cells they walked, a numb dread settling over the group. Finally, they came upon a solid iron door, a padlock hung securely from a latch. Sheik sliced the lock with his blade, and it fell to the floor with a loud thud in two clean halves. He undid the latch and grasped the door handle with both of his hands. He pulled slightly, and the door remained shut. Sheik breathed out in frustration. With more effort, he pulled the door handle. He heard a loud creaking sound from the door hinges, and felt the massive iron slab of a door begin to move towards him, and quickly he moved out of the way. The door swung open and smashed against the stone wall with a huge "THUD." Whatever lay beyond the door would have definitely known of their presence now.
Warm light bathed the room, cast from the flames in a stone fireplace. The reflections of the flames danced brightly on beautifully carved dark oak bookshelves, filled with tomes. Some books were contemporary, while most were archaic and bound together in old dirty leather. Knowledge seemed to spill from the room itself. The floor was blanketed in rich maroon carpet, with intricate golden designs at the hem. The repeating pattern of three wavy lines edged the hem. The top line looked like a gust blowing east, while the bottom looked as if the gust was blowing west, mirroring each other against the middle line. Sheik recognized it as the Ancient Hylian Glyph representing power. The carpet covered every part of the floor except a central dais where there sat a cauldron bubbling with a deep purple liquid. Sheik's mouth formed a tight line– yet another unnatural occurrence in this corridor.
"Ah, you've arrived."
The voice startled Sheik and reflexively he activated his shield again and stood in front of Tetra and Colin.
In the back of the chamber was a platform a step up from the rest of the floor. A tall man dressed in deep violet robes stood with a hood covering his face. His incredibly pale and sickly complexion was complimented by his yellow irises and dead eyes. He seemed inhumanly thin and Sheik could not figure out how the man held a very large orb that seemed to be made of solid gold with such bony hands. There was no muscle to the man, and yet there was a very unnerving power about him, as if his eyes could see into Sheik's very soul.
"My name is Astor. You must be Sheik. I have looked forward to meeting you."